The fight is on, again
If Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer was banking on Premier Doug Ford keeping his head down until after the fall federal election, his hopes have likely now been dashed.
Ford gave a speech at the Association of Ontario Municipalities conference in Ottawa on Monday, where he talked about everything the province was doing for municipalities, including increasing funding for ambulance services by 4 per cent this year. But more interesting was what Ford didn’t talk about: The major funding cuts to municipal child care and public health programs to begin in January that government officials were putting in place behind the scenes.
Those cuts are no more acceptable now than they were last spring when the Ford government first threatened them, before pausing them in the face of massive protests.
First, the cuts will put desperately needed planned new daycare spaces in jeopardy, even as 13,300 Toronto children are on the waiting list for fee subsidies. That’s because the province will require cash-strapped municipalities to cover 20 per cent of the cost, whereas new spaces had been fully funded by the province under the Wynne government.
Further, the province will cut certain public health services by 30 per cent. While that’s softened from earlier announced cuts of 50 per cent to Toronto, it still threatens the city’s ability to pay for clean water, vaccination programs, school breakfast programs for children in need and its ability to prevent outbreaks of diseases such as SARS.
Nor is Ford’s duplicitous manner of delivering these cuts any more palatable than it was last April.
Nowhere was it mentioned in Ford’s first budget, which was touted by the Tories as extraordinarily generous, that municipalities were in line for punishing cuts that would be dribbled out over the next month.
Similarly, in his Monday speech, Ford seemed to want it both ways, bragging about his largesse while stealthily paving the way for cuts that municipalities will be hard-pressed to bear.
It’s little wonder Ford is now facing a backlash the likes of which this province has rarely seen, his personal popularity plummeting to ratings below even those for former premier Kathleen Wynne before the last provincial election. Nor is it surprising that some conservatives have begged Ford to lie low in the lead-up to the federal election, lest his actions harm Scheer’s prospects.
Ford, after all, has become the preferred target of the federal Liberals, as we saw again in the wake of Monday’s announcement. “Conservative cuts leave municipalities with two choices: raise taxes or cut core services,” said Finance Minister Bill Morneau, “with both options making life more expensive for Ontarians.”
But more important than their effect on Scheer’s electoral prospects is how the cuts will affect Ontarians.
On this score, the prognosis is bleak. Last spring, more than 11,000 people signed a petition launched by Mayor John Tory against the cuts, which he estimated would, at that time, cost the city $178 million. Delaying the cuts hasn’t made them more palatable, acceptable or smart.
They still erode much-needed basic services, the very sort of services Ford promised voters in the provincial election campaign that he would not cut. Ford said, instead, he would find $6 billion in “efficiencies.”
But in what world is putting people’s health at risk an efficiency? Or cutting programs that feed needy children? Or slashing funding for child care spaces? These are not efficiencies, but a blow to the people of this province, especially the poor.
It bears repeating the point this paper made last spring: Just as this government’s cuts are relentless, the pushback against them must also be relentless.
We have seen with past reversals by this government — on autism funding and on controversial appointments, among others — that if critics are loud enough, Ford can be persuaded to change course. Ontario municipalities, and Toronto in particular, can’t now afford to be quiet.